Natural selection

Legal professionals don't just disagree on the value of aptitude tests '“ they can't even agree on what they're supposed to be for.

The Legal Service Board, which decided to commission a study on the implications of law school entrance aptitude tests, said it did so 'to explore whether such tests could help enhance diversity and fair access to the profession by testing the potential of aspiring lawyers on a level playing field where inequalities in prior educational attainment are irrelevant'.

This is a very different purpose for the tests than that of the LNAT Consortium, the seven universities that together operate an aptitude test scheme precisely to identify inequalities among applicants whose educational attainment is otherwise equal: uniform straight 'A' exam grades.

LNAT is just one of a number of university bodies that have introduced some form of test to supplement decision making based solely on GCSE and A-level exam results. One reason for this is 'grade inflation', in which a lowering of the standards necessary for top grades to allow schools and politicians to boast improvements in standards has led to an overall cheapening of the exam grade 'currency'. With applications from students with straight As in both exams now routine, exam grades alone are no longer enough to distinguish between them.

The problem is one acknowledged by Dr Chris Dewberry, a researcher at Birkbeck College's department of organisational psychology, who undertook the study on behalf of the LSB. 'Traditional methods for selecting people who wish to be educated and trained to work in the legal profession are increasingly difficult to implement successfully,' which, he says, is due to 'the substantial increase in the proportion of GCSE and A-level students awarded the highest grades in recent years, making attempts to discriminate between candidates problematic'.

However, tackling grade inflation is not the only merit of aptitude tests. Another is to help law schools to gauge the ability of applicants with overseas educational qualifications. 'In many cases these applicants possess undergraduate degree qualifications which cannot easily be compared to UK first degree standards, and this presents a difficulty for those using undergraduate degree qualifications as a basis for candidate selection,' Dewberry observes.

Dewberry also points to 'the current government's concern with social mobility, the disproportionate number of students from independent schools studying at the most selective universities, and the tendency of students from independent schools to underperform at university compared to state school children with the same educational qualifications' '“ social factors which have further complicated the process of selecting the best applicants to study the law.

He concludes that aptitude tests could address the 'concern of the government and other agencies with social mobility, and with this the importance of opening careers in the professions to the most able and suitable candidates irrespective of the social and educational advantages or disadvantages they have experienced in the past'.

Advocates of aptitude tests argue that they are a fair means of helping law schools distinguish between candidates that provide objective results, while also being affordable and efficient to run. However, opponents argue that the tests fail to reflect some of the characteristics needed in a future law student or lawyer, as well as unfairly favouring those candidates who can afford to be coached for the tests.

In the following opinion pieces, academics from the law schools at Bristol, Cardiff and Oxford universities debate the merits of aptitude tests for applicants and explain why their law school have or have not launched one of their own.